


Wedding Cake

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Kamisama Hajimemashita | Kamisama Kiss, かくりよの宿飯 | Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi | Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits (Anime)
Genre: Brotherhood, Crossover, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Healing, I have no excuses, KamiHaji Week: Crossover Day, Light Angst, spoilers for both Kamisama Kiss and Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 09:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20307040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Mizuki and Tomoe go to pick up a wedding cake, just a little while before Tomoe and Nanami tie the knot.  The cake's a gift, you see, from a certain chef at the Ayakashi inn Tenjin-ya.





	Wedding Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!!! Thank you for giving this fic a try/getting far enough to read the notes -- I know it's a p specific idea, ahahaha. These shows really remind me of each other, though, and when I saw there was a Crossover Day for KamiHaji-Week... Idk. I've been working on this for a little while. It's way longer than I thought it would be.... @_@ No, I don't know what I'm doing. I apologize wholeheartedly for anything I might've forgotten or gotten wrong. 
> 
> I've been watching a lot of the show "Nailed It!" lately, which might sort of explain this. I genuinely considered doing a Kamisama Kiss/Nailed It! crossover.......... Hmmmmm Tomoe on a baking show???
> 
> Honestly, this is mostly Mizuki introspection as always. :P

_I. The Shinshi Visits an Inn for Ayakashi_

Mizuki had never really wondered about places like Tenjin-ya, when he was with Lady Yonomori. His world had only needed to stretch as far as the river twining around the shrine he’d been hatched for, back then... A river like his own coiling snake-spirit self, in a way, and looking kinda like one of his Lady’s dropped hair ribbons from up above. That could have always been enough. Sure there’d been those annual visits to Izumo, but that was a little different, right? 

Day-to-day, Mizuki had brewed his Lady’s sacred sake and tried to make her laugh. He’d fought off those wicked, teasing spirits that liked the drag humans down into the river, too... Creatures born of storms, maybe. Creatures born of hunger, or maybe the kind of Yokai that wanted to splatter mortal things apart like breaking eggs to make an omelette. Day-to-day, Mizuki never thought much about what kind of inns Ogre-Gods might run in the spirit world. Sure there’d be other deities hanging around in inns like that, sometimes, soaking in the hot springs or what have you, but there would also be the sort of wild Yokai Mizuki’d been hatched to protect his Lady from. As if he was gonna share a roof with creatures like _that_! Pffft. 

Well. Times had changed, hadn’t they? Mizuki had come to Tenjin-ya with his fellow Shinshi at Mikage Shrine, now... Though he and Tomoe would only serve there together for a little while longer. It was unreal. It was the end of another era, even if Mizuki still sometimes expected to glance up and find himself back by the river he’d been hatched for. The world was cruel, moving so fast. Leaving the ageless behind.

Tomoe wouldn’t be ageless for long, either, you know. He was going to marry Nanami, so, so soon, and become a human man for her. Sometimes Mizuki wondered if he’d have been able to make a choice like that, if Nanami had loved him the way he’d wanted her to. Would he have been able to finally shed the skin Lady Yonomori had given him so completely? Not just shuffling pieces of it off every now and then, as all snakes did, but really, truly, giving his divinity away?

That was almost all Mizuki had left of his first goddess, wasn’t it? That divinity. But Tomoe had been a wild fox before he’d ever tended a shrine. He had hung around places like Tenjin-ya, the Ogre-God’s domain, all the time. That was part of why they were heading back there now, actually. One of Tomoe’s old acquaintances worked for Tenjin-ya, and he apparently knew this woman who could cook for Ayakashi in a way that overwhelmed them — an incredible way. That acquaintance said he’d told this woman about Tomoe’s wedding, and she had offered to make a cake as a gift. Said it was awfully romantic, a Kitsune trading away his magic and the promise of forever for love.

And yes, it was romantic. Sure. Of course. If Mizuki’s new goddess Nanami _hadn’t_ been given something romantic when she’d handed away her heart to this creep, Mizuki might have needed to take drastic measures. Poison Tomoe’s breakfast one of these days, or something. He had his ways.

Mizuki would have been lying if he told you he wasn’t going to miss Tomoe, even if right about now he was trying really hard not to let his brother Shinshi see how strange he was finding it here at the northeast corner of the hidden realm. The unluckiest slice of everything; the Ogre Gate. He didn’t want to give Tomoe any more ammunition to use against him, after all.

The Ginten District just across the bridge from Tenjin-ya was bustling and loud, full of wild Yokai venders and the sort of smells that wrinkled Mizuki’s nose. He’d stepped in _multiple_ suspicious puddles; he’d locked eyes with a couple water spirits he thought he might remember from the good old days. Water spirits Mizuki had probably chased away within an inch of their pathetic, murder-y lives, mind you. Now, Mizuki just watched those scumbags carefully, venom sharp in his eyes. Now, he just strolled by at Tomoe’s side, and pointed out a mask shop in what he hoped was a very calm voice.

“Ha, look! They’re selling death masks, just like I did back at our festival.” It felt like it had happened yesterday, that festival. Mizuki’s booth, where some of the masks could show a person what their face would look like right at the moment of their death. Where did the time go?

“I guess they are,” Tomoe sniffed. His fox ears were twitching, here, with all these jumbled sounds. It occurred to Mizuki that his brother Shinshi would’ve probably fit in better around these streets if he’d decked himself out like he used to. Old-timey wild fox stuff.

Tomoe grabbed Mizuki’s arm — (“Pay attention! Do you want to get hit?!”) —and pulled him out of the way of an ornate carriage full of cackling Tengu elders, a handful of them drunk out of their minds. On his first visit into the frantic modern human city, Mizuki had been bullied into purchasing an absurdly expensive sticker with shrine money — Tomoe still didn’t know about that. If wild Yokai tried to bully him into something worse, here, Mizuki told himself he could summon rivers from beneath the street, or something. He was still plenty dangerous, even considering the whole sticker thing. 

Mizuki wasn’t sure why Tomoe had wanted him to come along here, but... Well. The shrine was going to be so hollow and _wrong_ without Nanami there — and it was going to be much too quiet without Tomoe, too. As if Mizuki could have told him anything but yes, when he’d asked.

“Can’t pick up a single cake by yourself? Wow! Maybe it’s good such a useless Shinshi won’t be serving this poor shrine anymore,” Mizuki had snickered. But before Tomoe had managed to _completely_ un-invite him, he’d added, “Of course I’ll help with something like this. I mean... Anything for Nanami, right?”

Right. 

They were nearly there, now. Tenjin-ya loomed above them, a glossy palace rising up to meet the mountains. Another crooked mountain in its own self, maybe — a glimpse into Tomoe-the-stranger’s life, back when Mizuki had only ever heard gory rumors about him. Tomoe, before Mizuki could’ve ever imagined being on speaking terms, let alone practically family.

Ghostly ships passed through the air, here, with sigils on their flags Mizuki couldn’t even begin to recognize. He had been so, so long under the lake, once Yonomori Shrine was flooded. He had slithered his way out into such a different life. 

_II. The Shinshi and a Master Innkeeper are Both Jealous of a Cake _

It turned out, Tomoe had met his acquaintance Ginji while he was working at Mikage Shrine, still learning the ropes of becoming a sacred familiar. So... Not as much a remnant of his darker days as Mizuki might have thought. Ginji was another Kitsune, sure, but he’d been raised in a shrine just like Mizuki had: he didn’t want to talk about his goddess, either, and he folded his arms around himself just a little when the shrine he’d used to work for slipped into conversation. It had been by the ocean, Mizuki learned. He wondered if Ginji still dreamt in sea salt and cold water against his skin.

It made a sort of sense someone like Ginji might have reached out to Tomoe, when he was first trying to find his way as a Land God’s Shinshi. Maybe a Kitsune like _this_ one didn’t like seeing anything left in the dark and metaphorically hungry. 

Ginji’s face was gentle and usually smiling; he was soft glances and self-deprecating laughter where Tomoe was that lofty voice he liked to use and all those fang-y smirks behind his decadent fan. In some ways, they might have looked like brothers, both with silvery short hair and soft fox ears... But then, by that same logic, Mizuki and Tomoe might have looked a bit like brothers, too.

Maybe, once, that thought would have bothered Mizuki... But now he found himself hoping Tomoe wouldn’t change too much, once he shed his Yokai self. Whenever Mizuki slid off a layer of his scales, there was just... You know... More of himself underneath. This was different, of course. What it Tomoe’s human soul didn’t turn out to be such an arrogant jerkwad? Eyes quick as foxfire, a temper like... Well, also like foxfire. What if, at the end of things, Mizuki barely recognized his fellow Shinshi anymore?

Ginji had come to meet Tomoe and Mizuki at the front desk, once they finally reached Tenjin-ya — he was the whole place’s “Young Master,” which meant he generally kept pretty busy. Not too busy to ask about how Nanami was, though... Not too busy to show the both of them up to an elegant room he’d had set aside for them for the night. Ginji was just going to run out and get Aoi, with her cake. He’d only be a second! Don’t go burning down the inn or anything, you wild fox, you.

The way Ginji talked about Aoi Tsubaki reminded Mizuki a little about the way he said “Nanami Momozono” in his head, sometimes. Tender and playful. Eager to grant her godly wishes. Constantly sort of wondering what was going on in that mysterious, quicksilver human head of hers. Her relentless empathy, her optimism: Mizuki was always trying to reach for that, with all his freshwater soul. _Nanami was amazing..._ And Mizuki would have bet so many jugs of sacred sake that Ginji thought this Aoi was amazing, too. 

She could definitely make a cake, anyway, it turned out. For whatever that meant. Aoi had carved the whole thing to look like a path winding through the forest, with glinting foxfire lights in the trees and tiny crystalline sugar flowers that seemed as if they might shatter apart if a person just tapped them the wrong way. Those flowers were practically dripping off the cake, almost translucent in the light. Ginji had helped Aoi shape them, apparently, working hunched over next to her in the restaurant she ran for the inn. A restaurant he’d found for her, and helped her set up.

_Moonflower_. The restaurant was called Moonflower, and the flowers looked just like that, if Mizuki thought about it: sugar and moonlight, warm wishes and the work of both human and Yokai hands. Not the daytime sun or the unknowable darkness between stars. Something for the middle road.

Tomoe and Ginji made inside jokes, as they admired the cake. They didn’t mention Ginji’s shrine, though — they carefully didn’t talk about the past too much, not in front of this human woman who might not know the whole story yet. Ah, so Ginji kept his share of secrets, too, didn’t he?

It was around when Tomoe and Ginji started laughing together about a prank they’d played on someone called “Ranmaru,” way back when, that the possibility of different cake toppers came into conversation.

“I still have some modeling chocolate left,” Aoi said, tucking a little dark hair back behind her ear. “We could shape the two of you from it, if you wanted. How do you think Nanami would want to be posed?”

Tomoe thought about that, running the tip of his tongue along the back of his teeth. “We should be in one of the trees,” he said, finally. There was a muffled chuckle in his voice. “Or maybe just about to fall out of one.” 

They’d fallen out of a tree minutes after they first met, right? When Nanami had first been sent to Mikage Shrine; when Tomoe was still a smothered wildfire of rage about Mikage ditching him for an incredibly long time to tend an altar with absolutely no Land God anywhere near it. Tomoe was telling Ginji and Aoi that story when Mizuki felt his eyes starting to burn. Tomoe was talking with his hands, earnest and... It was undeniable, really... Genuinely in love.

Nanami deserved nothing less.

Mizuki was exhausted, suddenly. He closed his eyes and heard Nanami’s voice echoing around in his head. Snapping at Tomoe, or coaxing him, or murmuring half-asleep “Thank you”-s when he passed her a lunchbox for school. 

Lady Yonomori’s shrine had been Mizuki’s whole heart, once. Now, all the parts that belonged to Nanami Momozono felt like they were going to bubble out of his chest. A heart gone to boiling. Gone to steam. How many times could this happen to a person before they found themselves irrevocably changed? 

Mizuki told everyone he’d be right back, and that Aoi’s cake was beautiful. So beautiful. Nanami was gonna love it!

And then, Mizuki stepped out for a minute, just to get a little air. He ended up wandering a ways through Tenjin-ya, past the spider spirit at the front desk who scowled when he didn’t think customers were looking... Past the baths with their heavy steam seeping into the hallway... And eventually out to a small back building, modest and clean and sort of hidden, probably, unless a person knew where to look. Or, unless a person just wanted to wander into the middle of nowhere. _That_ could work, too. 

This was Moonflower its own self, Mizuki saw. Though... Even without its human owner... It looked like the place was open? Mizuki thought for a second, glancing back at Tenjin-ya’s main towers, and then he went inside Aoi’s softly glowing restaurant. The warm golden light leaking from the window reminded him of melting caramel hard candy. 

At first, Mizuki thought he was alone, except for the clattering of dishes somewhere in the back of the place, behind the counter. Except for an ancient, sinuous magical presence, spilling over the world like a sweet-smelling stain.

“Hello?” Mizuki called, as more of a warning than anything. Mizuki had been told his footsteps were impossibly silent — he was even pretty good at sneaking up on Tomoe. “Is it okay if I sit here for a while? Maybe order a drink?”

The dishes stopped their clattering for a long second, and Mizuki heard someone hum in the depths of the restaurant. “Of course,” said a silky voice, then. There were currents of dark laughter here, natural as blood under skin. It was an Oni voice, a tender, oh-so-very-polite Ogre. 

When Tenjin-ya’s Ogre-God stepped out from deep behind Moonflower’s counter, Mizuki was surprised... But he wasn’t _actually_ surprised. It was weird to see the guy here, yeah, but it wasn’t like that voice — this magical presence — could have rightfully belonged to anyone else. 

The Master Innkeeper was wearing plastic gloves, covered in soap suds, and he was still holding a half-washed plate. He smiled at Mizuki — eyes liquid red, lips the sort that always looked hungry — and said he’d just go clean up a bit, and then... Mm. And then, maybe they could see what there was to drink.

Of course the Master Innkeeper’s face was just some pretty mask beneath his horns; of course he was being kind because he was still technically at work here. Of course this creature _definitely_ knew the taste of human flesh, which Mizuki had never really wanted to know, not even when fishermen drowned in Lady Yonomori’s river and there hadn’t been a lot of good turtles around to hunt lately. 

But even so, when the Master Innkeeper brought over a bottle of fancy hidden realm sake, Mizuki’s chest was burning in a way that meant he knew he was going to drink with him. Mizuki sat at the counter, wrapping his ankles around the chair legs; after a while, the Master Innkeeper slipped over to his side of things. They didn’t talk much, not at first. Tenjin-ya’s Master Innkeeper said Aoi probably thought someone _else_ was doing her restaurant’s dishes. She didn’t like him, after all, although everyone still called her the Ogre’s Bride.

Mizuki wondered if he should ask about that. Probably not, right? Dangerous Oni innkeepers probably didn’t like spilling their secrets to Shinshi who hadn’t really seen much of the human world, nevermind the Hidden Realm... Did they?

After a while, the Master Innkeeper said, “You know, Ginji told me you were coming. That wild fox Tomoe was bringing you, to meet new friends. Sort of sweet, we thought. You must be sorry to see him go.”

“What?” Mizuki laughed, over the edge of his cup. “_That_ doesn’t sound much like Tomoe. He probably brought me here to... I dunno. To rub my face in it, or something. In the cake, I mean. To...”

_To make new friends._ To show how Mizuki might have had more in common with plenty of Ayakashi out in the world than he would have wanted to let himself believe, once. But Tomoe wouldn’t do something like that, at least not for any kinda good reason. Or maybe he was thinking about being in Mikage Shrine alone for years...?

If any of that were true, Mizuki was sure Nanami put him up to it. 

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything,” the Master Innkeeper sighed. “Ginji will be disappointed, if we tell him. Ah, well. For what it’s worth, it’s a little difficult for me to look at that cake Aoi made, too. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is.” Mizuki tried to imagine a cake like that for his own self — maybe with a river running through it instead of swinging foxfire trees — and suddenly his eyes were burning again. His head was so heavy. He tucked it into his folded arms, soft white hair falling over his eyes.

“Maybe someday,” the Master Innkeeper murmured. _Maybe someday,_ but for what?

The Ogre-God seemed impossibly lonely, just then. All this enormous inn to run, and still his eyes looked a little like empty windows. Creepy empty windows someone had decorated with red glass, but empty windows all the same. Mizuki found himself shaking awake, just a little bit. Mizuki found himself wondering what his Land God would have done, in his shoes.

“Hey,” Mizuki said. “Nanami — she’s my Goddess, you already know that — taught me a card game. Would you like to play it?”

The Master Innkeeper thought, rubbing at his cheek just a little with a long, sharp nail. Not the sort of claw people usually washed dishes with. “Alright,” he said, after a minute. “I expect I have some human cards around here, somewhere. Why not?”

_A Brief Afterward: The Shinshi Goes Home With a Prayer in His Pocket _

Before Mizuki went back to his and Tomoe’s fancy inn room — before Mizuki decided whether or not to assure Tomoe that he’d definitely come back here, sometimes, when life at Mikage Shrine grew quiet and strange — the Master Innkeeper said, “Your Land God deals with matchmaking, am I right?”

“Mm-hmm,” Mizuki chirped, slapping down a set of cards that he knew were worth a _lot_ of points.

“Would you bring a prayer back for me? No conditions. No anger, if it doesn’t work out. I just... I’d like to try.”

And Mizuki said he would. Of course! He was Lady Nanami’s — and Lord Mikage’s now, he supposed — loyal Shinshi, after all. Mizuki sat quietly while the Master Innkeeper wrote his prayer down on part of the playing card box, and then he folded it up to take away with him, carrying wishes alongside that Moonflower wedding cake. 


End file.
